


Keep Calm and Eat Pumpkin Soup

by frozen_delight



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel in the Bunker, Domestic Winchesters, Gen, Men of Letters Bunker, Season/Series 11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 07:03:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5447534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frozen_delight/pseuds/frozen_delight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set pre-11x09. Cas obsesses over <i>Downton Abbey</i>, Sam obsesses over serial killers, and Dean obsesses over pumpkin soup. Just your average day at the bunker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keep Calm and Eat Pumpkin Soup

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cassosmooth58](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=cassosmooth58).



> Written for cassosmooth58 as part of the spn_j2_xmas challenge 2015.
> 
> Many, many thanks to my fantastic beta anactoria who really deserves a medal for putting up with my weird sentence structures. All remaining mistakes are mine of course.
> 
> I wrote this before 11x09 aired and intended it to be a pretty light-hearted fic, but maybe it no longer seems quite so light-hearted when you think of what happens next…

With wet hair Sam marched into the kitchen and scowled at the cup of coffee Dean handed him.

“Good morning to you too,” Dean said, more than a little pissed at Sam’s less than enthusiastic reaction to his well-meant caffeine offering.

Okay, so maybe it hadn’t been a completely altruistic gesture, sue him. There was nothing wrong with attempting to stop Sam from launching straight into another of those endlessly tiring discussions about the Cage and the Darkness that never led anywhere—because Dean wouldn’t let them lead anywhere, dammit!

After begging Dean to unleash a force of cosmic evil onto the world rather than to kill him only a couple months back, you’d have thought Sam would be a little more understanding of Dean’s need to protect him. But no such luck.

“I need some air,” Sam said, despite all the evidence declaring that he’d only just come back inside from an early morning run, and stalked out of the kitchen.

Pursing his lips, Dean stared at the untouched cup of coffee Sam had left behind on the counter. It quickly occurred to him that Sam’s pissy mood had to be at least partly down to Cas once again usurping his room to catch up on his favorite TV shows. Not even puzzling over the extremely old Aramaic parchment rolls Cas had retrieved from some cave in Anatolia had managed to console Sam over the loss of his bed.

Honestly, Dean didn’t really get it. Sam didn’t even spend that much time in his room, anyway. And since he’d refused to let Dean buy him a memory foam mattress like his own, the bed in the room he was sleeping in now couldn’t possibly be all that different. So it had to be the principle of the thing.

Briefly, Dean entertained the thought of telling Cas to quit hogging Sam’s room. But he’d already had to kick Cas out of the bunker once, and the memory still hurt. The mere idea of asking Cas to move rooms within the bunker felt too close to abandoning him yet again, and Dean couldn’t do that. _Wouldn’t_ do that. Not to mention that Cas was still struggling with the aftermath of Rowena’s attack dog spell.

So he’d be damned if he breathed a single word on the topic.

*

Two hours later Sam came back in a considerably better mood. Probably because he’d been to the farmer’s market and he was enough of a freak that talking about vitamins and pesticides with a kindred spirit always cheered him up.

Well, everyone had their coping mechanisms. And there were more embarrassing ones than an unhealthy obsession with organic food production. Like crocheting. Or aqua gym. So in principle, Dean was just fine with it—which didn’t mean he didn’t make fun of Sam about it on a regular basis, since he took his big brotherly duties way too seriously for that—except for the part where Sam always arrived back home with half a truck full of vegetables he didn’t know how to cook.

Today, Sam was bearing a crate full of pumpkins. _Pumpkins_. What the hell was Dean supposed to do with pumpkins? Pumpkin pie was just about the only kind of pie Dean would ever say no to voluntarily.

He could always carve a Jack O’Lantern or two out of them. Maybe send a particularly hideous one to Crowley, just to annoy him. And hide a clownish one in Sam’s closet to scare him off bringing home any pumpkins ever again.

But if he wanted to keep Sam in a good mood (and out of the Cage), he needed to do something productive with the rest of them. Like food. Really delicious food.

Which meant he needed a recipe—right now!

*

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Sam complained from where he sat poring over his Aramaic parchments. “Why would anyone in times where writing was incredibly difficult and expensive waste paragraph after paragraph writing about goats?”

“Mmmm,” Dean replied, not really listening to his brother. He was too busy surfing Food Network and thepioneerwoman.com for pumpkin soup recipes.

“Dude, are you watching porn again?” Sam glared at him. “On _my_ laptop?”

Dean hastily switched his browser tab to the Busty Asian Beauties website he’d loaded just in case, because he’d rather face Sam’s wrath than the mortification of having his little brother find out he was hanging out in cooking forums like a second Julia Child.

True, using Sam’s laptop was more than a little inconvenient, but what was he supposed to do when for some mysterious reason his own laptop never seemed to have a wifi signal and Sam’s always did?

“Huh?” he answered.

Sam groaned. “You are, aren’t you? God, I don’t even want to know.” He ran his hands through his hair and rubbed his eyes.

Dean was about to suggest that maybe Sam should take a short beauty nap when he remembered that Sam’s bed was still occupied by Cas. Not a good idea. Time to play his ace, then.

He glanced at the recipe he’d selected and memorized it before closing all tabs but one. He turned the laptop to face Sam.

“Look what I found.” He waggled his eyebrows at his brother.

Suspicion etched into every line on his forehead, Sam squinted at the screen.

“Right up your alley, little bro, right?” Dean continued blithely, and then adopted the mocking expression he knew was necessary to sell it to his brother. “Looks like you’re not the only one who obsesses over this freakish stuff.”

“I don’t—obsess,” Sam protested after a moment, already distracted by the contents of Serial Killer Central.

Dean grinned to himself as he made his way back to the crate of pumpkins waiting in the kitchen. So what if Sam hadn’t made any progress with discovering ways to take out the Darkness? At least he wasn’t pissed at Dean or Cas, or contemplating any suicidal adventures to the darkest ends of the pit. Dean was almost ready to send Dahmer’s offspring a thank you basket.

*

When two large pots of pumpkin soup simmered on the stove several hours later, waiting to be consumed, Dean decided to check in on Cas, who hadn’t come out of Sam’s room all day.

_\- …There are plenty of hours in the day. And of course I’ll have the weekend._

_\- Wha—what is a weekend?_

“A weekend refers to Saturday and Sunday, especially regarded as a time for lei—” Cas solemnly told the TV in front of him.

“Cas, are you watching _Downton Abbey_?” Dean interrupted him, disgust coloring every single syllable.

Cas turned to look at him with what Dean had privately come to label as Cas’s Squinty Face No. 3. It was usually followed by some kind of bizarre question that left Dean undecided whether to erupt into laughter or tears. “Lady Violet seems supremely eloquent and educated,” he said, with evident confusion. “Why does she not know what a weekend is?”

“It’s—” Dean glanced at the screen. “Ugh, that Thomas is such a dick! Just wait for it when he—”

“I knew it!” Sam appeared in the doorway behind him wearing a gleeful smirk.

Dean decided to play it cool. He put on his most innocent I-have-no-idea-what-my-giant-geek-of-a-brother-is-talking-about frown. “Knew what?”

“That you watched _Downton Abbey_!”

“Shhh,” Cas admonished them from the bed. “I can’t hear what they’re saying.”

Ignoring him, Dean glared at Sam. “No, I didn’t!”

“Yes, you did!”

“It was when I was with Crowley, okay?” Dean blurted out. “That totally doesn’t count.”

Sam’s face fell so fast Dean’s stomach lurched at the sight. Fuck, why had he said that? He knew how badly Sam reacted every time he was reminded of the weeks Dean had spent partying with Crowley while Sam had been looking for him, not even knowing if Dean was dead or alive.

He pasted the unconcerned grin he always kept handy for particularly awkward moments onto his face and shrugged. “Whatever.” He pointed a finger at Sam and Cas in turn. “Whenever you kids are ready, we can have dinner.”

For a moment, Sam just stared at him. It left Dean ready to despair. Then the wounded expression finally slipped off Sam’s face, replaced by something akin to a smile. “I’m starving.”

“Can’t it wait? I really want to find out if—no, no,” Cas suddenly changed direction, prompted by whatever he must have seen on Sam’s and Dean’s faces. Lately, he was getting a lot better at reading them. Maybe all that binge-watching was finally paying off. “I’m a little hungry myself.”

Dean breathed out a sigh of relief and led the way to the kitchen.

*

“This is delicious!” Sam purred around a spoonful of soup.

Dean preened.

“It tastes like…molecules,” Cas observed carefully. Before Dean could muster up the energy to glare at him, he hastened to add, “I like molecules.”

Sam laughed into his bowl of soup.

For the next few minutes, they ate in companionable silence. Then Dean became aware that Sam kept throwing him furtive little glances. It filled him with violent apprehension.

_Please_ , he thought, _please, God, the Flying Spaghetti Monster or whichever other giant dickbag is listening, please let us have one nice meal without talking about the Cage_.

“What?” he asked when he couldn’t stand it any longer.

Sam set down his spoon with an ominous clatter. “You know that forum you showed me?”

That wasn’t what Dean had expected at all. “Yeah.”

“There was a thread about us.”

Dean nearly choked on his soup. He coughed into his hand. “What?”

“What forum?” Cas interjected in evident interest.

“The Serial Killers Give Me Serious Boners Club. God,” Dean averted his gaze from Cas’s contemplative humans-are-an-exceedingly-complex-species frown and fixed Sam with wide eyes, “I really hope no one’s ever jerked off to the thought of us.”

Sam’s mouth didn’t even twitch in amusement.

“Hey,” Dean said, “you don’t think—” He left the sentence hanging in the air, unfinished, unsure what he thought Sam didn’t or shouldn’t think.

Cas’s eyes darted from one to the other, his face morphing into a different kind of frown, sympathetic and concerned.

“You know they’re right,” Sam said in a small voice.

“No, they’re not,” Dean automatically responded. “Sammy, hey, listen to me,” he said again with greater emphasis, “they’re not right. This job—it’s not just about killing things. You know that. You whine about it all the time, right?”

A hint of humor entered Sam’s somber expression. “But—”

“No but. They don’t know the whole story—”

“If they did they’d—” Sam sounded so troubled Dean couldn’t possibly let him continue. He knew they were just a second away from Sam blaming himself for releasing the Darkness and suggesting yet again that he had to go to Lucifer’s cage to fix it.

“And they never will if we don’t stay alive to tell it.” He gave Sam his best pleading face. “And you won’t either. This is just the mid-season finale, man, not the end of the series.”

“Dean is right,” Cas joined in, voice grave. “Hiatus is always a terrible time of the year. But fear not, Sam, this too shall pass.”

Sam failed to suppress a smile. “Alright.” He picked up his spoon again. “But I’m warning you—as soon as winter hiatus begins, I want my bed back.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. Feedback is love.
> 
> You can also talk to me here: [LJ](http://frozen-delight.livejournal.com/) | [Tumblr](http://frozen-delight-blog.tumblr.com/)


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